


glum olitory obfuscate gazebo

by soundingsea



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Community: apocalyptothon, Dystopia, F/F, Female Protagonist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-31
Updated: 2007-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-06 04:09:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soundingsea/pseuds/soundingsea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A certain Mountain View company turns America into a technofascist dystopia. Mac's fighting back with the 21st century's most under-rated weapon: spam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	glum olitory obfuscate gazebo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alixtii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alixtii/gifts).



> Thanks: spiralleds and ironchefjoe for beta-reading. And I couldn't stop tinkering with it, so all mistakes are definitely mine.

Mac knots the broken laces on her combat boots and pulls on a marginally clean green hoodie. She slides her palmtop system into her messenger bag and throws the bag over her shoulder. Doesn't lock her door, just lets it close; there's nothing for anyone to steal, and a locked door just means they'll kick it in.

November in California is colder than it used to be. The wind whips up a frenzy of paper and dust; a few errant drops of rain fall on her nose and cheeks. Mac pulls her hood over her blue dreads and hunches her shoulders, walking past buildings even more run-down than hers, heading into the shantytown. Her stomach rumbles as she clutches the anon cash-sticks in her pocket. They're not what you'd call illegal, since laws are a patchwork of local enforcement, but cash is discouraged by Tía Nuestra. These sticks are meant as giveaways, prizes in games of chance, that sort of thing. She can't spend too many in one place, or Tía might notice.

She buys a crusty baguette from an old woman and hard cheese with a heavy rind from a nervous-looking man in the next stall. She misses the clarity of her vegan days, but she misses a lot of things. Not worth dwelling on the past; past is gone. She's got more room in her bag and more sticks in her pocket: the fruit vendor plugs the proffered stick into a port on her palmtop system and nods with approval, handing Mac two apples, pale pink mottled with green.

Mac fills her Nalgene bottle at the well and drinks deep from the pump. Offgrid water doesn't have the chemicals they drop in the processed water. She doesn't mind washing in that stuff, but damned if she's going to make their job any easier by drinking it. Nice to have something besides water to drink, though. And she knows just the thing.

Mac wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and heads to her last stop. Ales and ciders in reclaimed bottles with hand-lettered labels line the shelves. Bit of theater, since there's no earthly reason why the brewer couldn't have labels printed. But it works anyhow, appeals to something in the back of Mac's brainstem that wants to connect with people. Same thing that makes Tía work, she guesses. Nobody wants to be alone.

A heavy brown jug is labeled "dry cran-apple". Mac doubts the cranberry part; when's the last time she saw a transport from up north? But who cares; it'll get the job done. The sales girl finishes with another customer, turns to her, and gasps audibly. "Mac?"

Hey, look. A face Mac hasn't seen in years but knows like her own. Precious few of those left. "Madison. Long time."

*

Madison leaves the brewing stall under the watchful eye of her baker neighbor and takes off with Mac. Maybe Madison shouldn't leave mid-day, but Mac doesn't much care; they've got catching up to do.

"Some future, huh?" Mac says. "We're almost 25, and I don't see any flying cars. Jetpacks, neither."

Madison smiles. Her teeth look like she's still got access to baking soda or something. Mac self-consciously tongues her bad molar before resolving to forget about it.

Madison tosses her still-blonde hair the way Mac remembers. "Food was supposed to come in pill form by now; that's sorta right, with the genemods. Nice bag of contraband you've got there."

"Right, food crimes. This is not how the future was supposed to be." Mac shoots Madison a sidelong glance. Reaction is everything.

Madison makes a face. "Turning 25 was supposed to mean lower car insurance, not walking everywhere."

"Air's a lot cleaner now that Tía banned personal automobiles," Mac offers, controlling her excitement at Madison's mildly seditious statement. "But yeah, I miss my Bug."

"Yeah, my parents got me a new car right before it all went wrong. That whole bee thing, the last time they tried to have an election. Totally lame; I hardly got to drive it." The hitch in Madison's voice doesn't seem to be for a car.

Mac looks around for something, anything to change the subject. "Look! It's one of those old R2-D2 mailboxes! Remember, back in '07?"

Madison's back to her haughty self. "Ew, it looks like some kind of rodent's living in there."

She's right; the mailbox is smashed open, and the remnants of undelivered mail are some kind of nest. After the botched election, the food riots, and the Eastern seaboard being wiped off the map, America was in what you'd call a state of emergency. And a certain Mountain View company was up for the challenge of restoring order. Sorta. Paper mail delivery? Not so much. Not like people really cared. Private couriers were way less susceptible to fraud and bribery.

Mac doesn't say any of this to Madison. She just walks next to her, and when Madison shivers a little, Mac slips an arm out of the sleeve of her hoodie and pulls Madison into its relative warmth.

*

Mac blames the jug of cider for their current position, with Madison sprawled on the blanket Mac's grandma knitted for her. Should have been Madison's blanket, and Madison's grandma, too. But everyone who could tell Madison about that is dead or--Mac concentrates on the matter at hand, as it were. A few more licks and Madison is writhing, catching Mac's head between her knees and whimpering.

"God, Mac -- I never thought--" Madison gasps. Mac answers without speaking, and presently, Madison returns the favor. And if Mac looks at the cracks in the ceiling and pretends, well, who's to say Madison isn't doing the same.

After, they lie together on the blanket, Madison toying with Mac's dreads while Mac breathes in Madison's clean scent.

"I heard about your family," Mac finally offers. "I thought you--"

"Almost. Don't want to talk about it." Madison is more subdued than Mac's ever seen her. Not much of a market for celebutantes these days, and this barbie's a bit broken by survival.

"The avian flu of '09 wasn't that bad, people say. Marginal casualties." Mac picks up her apple-cutting knife and drives it into the wood of her bedside table. "Fuck marginal."

Madison nods. "Both our families in those statistics, then." She doesn't flinch at the knife sticking out of the table.

Mac rolls over and kneels up, the air catching at the sweat on her naked back and cooling her. Over to the window and opening it, the hiss of the wind loud in the quiet room, louder than her racing thoughts, than her thumping heart.

"I shouldn't have brought you here," Mac says. "I'm involved in stuff--it's not safe." She turns back to face Madison, who's lying on Mac's bed like she's home. Irrationally, Mac wishes Madison could stay. It's not like anyone who'd mind is still--

"Nothing's safe," Madison says, flipping her hair in a way that leads Mac's thoughts in a direction she doesn't want them going. "Can't trust any company willing to run this joke of a country, but it's not like they're after you more than anyone else, right?"

Mac doesn't know how to answer that without compromising herself, without telling Madison too much; she shouldn't have said anything. "It's not like I'm..." She tries again. "They might be looking for me, and there's a good chance--" Swallowing, Mac makes her decision. "I can't--we can't do this. Ever again."

The hurt look only lasts for a second, but then, Madison's probably had a lot of practice in perfecting her mask of indifference. "Whatever. I don't need to be involved with your pathetic little life, you squatter freak."

Madison flounces to the door, grabbing her clothes as she goes, and Mac is left alone. Peachy-fuckin'-keen. Just the way she wants to be.

*

Crop failures in Nebraska. Dust storms in Georgia. Golf-ball-sized hail in Arizona. Just another morning's worth of updates in Mac's reader. She uses the 'retro' skin, and everything's blue and white, sparse and clean.

Logan used to ask why she subscribed to climate newsfeeds. "Tornados in Idaho don't tell me anything about the waves at Cape Crescent," he would say. 'Course, he would say a lot of things, and most of them weren't anything Mac didn't already know. Didn't make them any easier to hear.

The text swims on her screen. She resolutely scrubs at her traitorous eyes with the heels of her hands, until the words resolve crisp and clean. "Today's daily principle: don't be alone."

She'll be 25 in a week. She's wanted for her involvement in what the newsfeeds are calling a major terrorist organization. And she's totally alone. Well, unless you count that basil plant she keeps needing to prune. You can talk to plants, but they don't much talk back.

She can't just let Madison walk away. Resolved, she gets ready to head out. She'll bring the brown jug back to the market. It's an excuse to talk to Madison; she needs to get her deposit back, and hey, if Madison happens to be there, then that's a bonus.

*

The brewer's stall stands empty, canvas blowing in the Santa Ana. Looks like it's been slashed; it's hanging in irregular flaps. Broken crates and a smattering of green glass finish the all-too-familiar picture.

Mac stands stunned for a second before the white-hot rage bubbles up. She walks over to that taut-faced middle-aged woman at the baker's stall.

"Did those bastards raid this morning?"

The woman, who's wrapping bread in brown paper, pauses and looks at Mac before deciding to answer. "Yeah, Tía Nuestra came and cleared out Gregor's brewing operation at first light. Took that pretty thing who ran his stall, too. Right out of the marketplace!"

"Thanks," Mac says. "You want this jug?"

The woman nods, tucking it under her counter. "Now here's the odd part," she says. "If Gregor is a dissident, why's he still walking 'round?" She nods her head down the way, and Mac's gaze follows to a fat, red-faced old man who's voicing his complaints to the sympathetic cheese vendor.

All the moisture that should be in Mac's throat migrates to the small of her back and the palms of her hands. She walks away casually until she's out of sight of the vendors, then breaks into a run before she remembers that there's always a chance of cameras in this part of town. She doesn't want to trip the Aberrant Behavior Sensors, so she forces herself to walk carefully. Slowly. As if she didn't just get an innocent girl sent to the camps. Right-o.

*

As soon as she's out of sight (of people and cameras, far as she can tell), Mac connects her palmtop to the latest interactive 'reality' game. While it plays, she drops to a command shell and checks on her botnet. Another couple thousand infected machines pumping out spam. Excellent. Anything that lowers the signal-to-noise ratio helps with the fight against the all-pervasive databases.

She scans her inbox for replies to her missives. She's using text-only mail; it's seen as a harmless anachronism, but it serves an important purpose: she can write her own filters. And she finds what she needs; a bounce message that replies with a delivery status of "Temptation". That's all it says. But she knows Logan, maybe better than anyone does. At least, she once did.

The Tía-sanctioned market's on the other side of the 5, and all the bridges within a couple miles collapsed years ago. People don't much mingle twixt the ocean side of town and her side. Mac climbs down the embankment carefully; there's a lot of cracked concrete. She crosses eight empty lanes, still after all this time unable to shake the feeling that she shouldn't be down here, shouldn't be scrambling over dead undergrowth on the median. She's glad to leave the ghost highway behind.

Mac heads into the official marketplace, hands in her pockets and hood over her head. Everything's clean here, with a plasticky newness that makes her ill. People amble past her and she avoids meeting their eyes. Might as well be zombies, all the free will they have left. Nobody's eating brains yet, but then again, tasty thought-filled brains are in short supply.

Shaking off a shudder, she pauses at what looks to be the right booth. A young man is selling shiny Washington apples, each laser-marked GMO-guaranteed.

"Mighty fine," Mac says, giving the vendor a quick look.

"I'll pack a bag for you," the guy says. He rummages around for a new set of latex gloves. Yeah? Well, Mac doesn't much want their hands to brush, either.

Mac trades the last of the cash sticks for half a dozen apples she has no intention of eating. She walks away from the vendor towards the 5. Opening the bag, she hefts an apple. It's heavy, juicy, and full of synth hormones. She'd rather bite into a live snake.

*

On her way home, she dumps the apples into the broken mailbox. The squirrels have eaten worse. And what she really wants is at the bottom of the bag. She fishes out a thumbnail-sized drive and connects it to her palmtop. Two-factor authentication's a bitch that way; knowing's the easy part. Getting your hands on the 'having' bit, though; that's the trick. Okay, signal off. Now, to wait.

Two blocks from her apartment, an arm reaches out of an alley and collars Mac, pulling her from sunlight into the shadows. One body hook later, Logan's gasping for breath and Mac's laughing at him.

"Dramatic much?" Mac asks. "You could have just dropped me a mail."

"Don't--ugh--trust it," Logan says, clutching his side. "You hit like a girl, which is to say, ouch."

"Tragic," Mac says. "We've got to stop meeting like this. Now what do you want?"

"_She_ wants to see you." Logan runs his fingers through his hair. It's longer than she remembers, and Mac resists the urge to reach out and play with it. None of that, now. And hey, he's still talking. "The old garment factory on Fourth and Main, midnight."

"Turn myself in?" Mac scoffs. "You sniffing something that's paralyzing your brain?"

"No. She just wants to parlay." Logan looks miserable in that patented puppy-dog way. Mac is pretty sure he practices it in the mirror.

"Why do you still trust her?" Mac asks, and continues without waiting for an answer. "Wait, I know. You have a weakness for self-righteous blondes who don't give you the time of day."

Logan leans into Mac, pressing her against the damp wall. "I'm not the only one," he says, breathing in her ear. "Not by a long shot." He's been drinking again, and Mac steels herself against caring. Logan's damned himself. It's business between them now. Works out well. Only thing between them, these days. Used to be something else, someone else, but Mac's not interested in play-acting as some replacement.

Her traitorous pulse still quickens, but thankfully the bastard pulls away and stalks down the alley without looking back. He's not the only one who craves a reminder, and she's going to need all the resolve she can muster.

*

A few minutes to midnight, Mac shows up at the deserted warehouse. The façade is marred by broken windows and piles left after recyclers stripped any adjacent trash for its useful metal. The main entrance is barred, but the gate swings open, squeaking on rusty hinges when she touches it.

The noise startles some sense into Mac. What in all hells is she doing here? It's been over five years (she knows the exact count of days, but she refuses to think about that) and the past's best left past. But she's been making these arguments to herself all day, and she always comes back to the same thing: she has to know. Deep breath, and she steps carefully inside, shaking the rain out of her dreadlocks.

Veronica's perched on a wooden crate, and she seems to be alone. Her hair is short and feathery like when Mac first met her, and she's tinier than Mac remembers. The light in here sucks, but it looks like she's stayed out of the sun. Time's still her friend, but worry will out: her face is harder. Mac's breath catches in her throat. She doesn't want to think about what Veronica does.

"I wouldn't put it past you to have seeded the clouds just to make this meeting more dramatic," Mac says. Her voice echoes a bit in the cavernous room, debris stacked almost to the ceiling the only furnishing.

"Guilty as charged," Veronica says. "But hey -- a few floods in the offgrid area don't matter. Those people made their choice." Probably safeguards Mac can't see, but it's still uncanny to see one of Tía's people offgrid without body armor or any obvious backup.

"Whatever happened to 'Don't Be Evil'?" Mac forces out. This is every bit as hard as she thought it would be.

Veronica smiles, predatory and sensual: as if there is a difference, when it comes to this woman. "Those are just words, Mac. Just a slogan. Today we've gone far beyond the original corporation."

"Corporation? Or government?"

Veronica shrugs. "That distinction's one for the history books. They're already teaching the glorious info-revolution in schools. At least, they're teaching it in the grid communities. We've rebuilt the schools; even got Clemmons back at Neptune High."

Mac rolls her eyes. "Let me guess. 'Total Information Awareness, or Tía Nuestra, as people call Uncle Sam's replacement, makes everyone happy, everyone safe...'"

Veronica drops off the crate, landing lightly on her feet. She walks towards Mac; Mac fights the urge to move forward or back up. "When we brought Madison Sinclair in, she had the most interesting things to tell us about you. Took a lot out of her to talk, poor thing, but she managed to do her patriotic duty."

"You _didn't_," Mac says, keeping her voice steady. She should have realized she was making Madison a target. Logan always used to talk about Veronica's jealous rages. "Where is she?"

"Madison's going to be re-educated. She'll do fine; better than her sister, I hope."

"Sister?" Mac can scarcely compose herself enough to ask. "How? Wha--I thought she was dead."

Veronica smiles. "She's too valuable a bargaining chip for us to... misplace."

"You bitch. Lauren's coming with me, or this conversation is over." Mac makes like she's heading for the door. It's only a bluff (maybe), but it's all she's got.

Veronica's voice is too-cheery, like she's become the brittle Veronica-bot she mimicked that year at Hearst. "We want to give her to you. We just want something in return."

Without asking for permission, Mac's voice leaps out with, "What?"

"Why, you, of course." Veronica's eyes rake Mac, head to toe and back again.

Mac's whole body flushes. "Me?" she squeaks. It comes out like she's still a scared teenager, not understanding what she's feeling. The killer is she understands all too well. Unfortunately, so does Veronica.

Veronica comes closer, touches both hands to the hollow of Mac's throat. "Yes, you," she says, letting her fingers drift apart, tracing Mac's collarbone out to her shoulders. "Tía needs you. And so do I."

Veronica smells like tart green apples, but Mac knows she can't believe everything she smells. Still, there's no note of chemical half-truth here. Maybe Tía doesn't feed their own the same way it does the masses. Figures.

"You were on their short list even back when it was all about stock prices and search," Veronica says. "And now it's your country asking. What you've been doing? You can keep doing, but to help people, not condemn them to squalor."

Mac tries to make up her mind in the moments between heartbeats, the curtain of Veronica's hair falling across her face. But when Veronica's lips meet hers, and Veronica's tongue parts her lips, Mac knows she isn't getting away this time.

The rain comes in through the broken windows. Lightening flashes in the distance. And Veronica Mars is in her arms. Nothing's well with the world, but Mac can't bring herself to care. Temptation curls within, and strikes at a moment of weakness. Mac's resolve crumbles, but she's not letting the resistance go with her.

"Hey, a régime's only as good as its infrastructure," Mac says. Her voice is steady, and she's learned to lie with her smile. Freedom's just another word for hacking outside the system; time to slither inside.

**Author's Note:**

> Request: After the fall of the government, dystopian technofascists recruit(ing) Mac. (interaction with Lauren and/or Madison Sinclair would be great, but optional)
> 
> |[comments on LJ](http://soundingsea.livejournal.com/317054.html#comments)|

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Trials of a Hacker](https://archiveofourown.org/works/43923) by [Alixtii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alixtii/pseuds/Alixtii)




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